Bio
Dr. Morag Park is a Professor in the Departments of Oncology and Biochemistry and joined McGill in 1989. She is a Knight of the Ordre national du Québec, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, Distinguished James McGill Professor and holds the Diane and Sal Guerrera Chair in Cancer Genetics at McGill University. Dr. Park received a B.Sc. with first class honors from the University of Glasgow, a Ph.D. in Viral carcinogenesis at the Medical Research Council Virology Institute in Scotland and completed postdoctoral training at the National Institutes for Cancer Research in Washington DC, US. She joined McGill University in 1989. She was the Director of the Molecular Oncology Group at the McGill University Health Centre (2006-8), Scientific Director of the Institute of Cancer Research for the CIHR (2008-13), co-chair of the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance (2008-2010) and is now Director of the Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Institute (2013-present). She is a recipient of a Canadian Cancer Research Alliance Award (2015) for Exceptional Leadership in Cancer Research, and also a recipient of the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences Arthur Wynne Gold Medal Prize (2016) for having made major contributions to biochemistry, molecular and cell biology in Canada. Most recently she is a recipient of the Canadian Cancer Society Robert L. Noble Prize (2017), the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation Grand Prix Scientifique (2019), and the Club de Recherches Cliniques du Québec Michel Sarrazin Award (2021).
Research
Dr. Park is a research leader in the field of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTK) and mechanisms of oncogenic activation of RTKs in human cancers. She cloned the Met RTK, which is now a key therapeutic target in oncology. She established the Breast Cancer Functional Genomics Group at McGill. She has pioneered studies of the breast tumour and immune microenvironment in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). She has established animal models as well as patient derived xenografts to study heterogeneity, tumor progression and drug response in TNBC. She was the elected chair of the Tumour Microenvironment Network of the American Association for Cancer Research (2015-2017). She has more than 270 publications, and an h-index of 85.
